Network Lifetime Optimization for Heterogeneous Sensor Networks With Mixed Communication Modes

Because of the inherent constraints imposed by sensor nodes themselves, prolonging the span of network lifetime for the wireless sensor networks (WSNs) introduces many new challenges. In this paper, we consider the cluster-based heterogeneous WSNs, which consist of two types of nodes, namely, the powerful cluster-heads and the inexpensive sensor nodes. In particular, in the WSN, the sensor nodes are deployed along the grid points. To better balance the energy consumption, the sensor nodes exchange data with the cluster-heads through mixed communication modes, i.e., they can communicate with cluster-heads by either single-hop or multi-hop mode. Given the initial energy of the sensor nodes, we develop the analytical models to derive the optimal communication range and identify the optimal mixed communication modes to maximize the span of WSN´s lifetime. Also presented are the simulation results which verify our developed analytical models.